Новая политика поддержки семей с детьми: кардинальный прорыв или первый шаг?

Abstract

The tendencies of decreasing fertility and growing number of families with one or no children are a natural demographic phenomenon for all developed countries. But in Russia in 1990s the process of decreasing fertility has been highly accelerated by the difficulties of transition economy. Russian society and Russian government, which is promoting measures against such unfavourable tendencies, are getting much concerned about such development. In December 2006 a set of documents has been produced, which define new measures of state social policy to support families with children, aimed, as it says, at stimulating fertility. In order to join the discussion on efficiency of such measures from economic point of view, first, we must assess the situation before such measures have been accepted and also understand, how such new resources may broaden the opportunities of the targeted population. According to our estimation, in 2006 children had a risk of poverty almost twice as higher as the average ail-Russian level. If a complex look over poverty has to be done, after using the indicators of scale and intensity it can be maintained, that babehood (up to year and a half) are the most vulnerable group. Moreover it is obvious, that other age groups of children also do not feature so higher living standards, and the problem of raising income and housing provision of all children is still very up-to-date. Let's get to the results of model, where we estimate, how the child home care allowance (for children up to year and a half) affects the living standards of the population before it has actually been introduced. According to our calculations, by the end of 2006 this programme has involved 1,5% of all the households. This allowance has accounted for 0,1% in the general income of all households and 4,1% in the income of the households, who were subject to such allowance. Therefore the macroeconomic effects of such influence are barely significant. They increase substantially after considering just the targeted population, but are still an insignificant part of their incomes. Since January 2007 this allowance is given to all women, which means, that the number of targeted households, which are subject to the allowance, will increase almost twofold (2,5% of all households). The share of this allowance in the incomes of the whole population will account for 0,3%, i.e. its influence is still very insignificant. Nevertheless the corresponding share within the targeted group will increase from 4% to 11% of its total income. Do such allowance actually affect the reproductive behaviour? It is accepted in the relevant literature, that it works only, when their share in the total household income is no less than 10% and the allowances persist in the long run. Therefore the increased amount of such aid has Summaries175 made it a significant resource, especially in the poor families with children, where it accounts for 25% of their incomes. This may also decrease the risk of poverty in the targeted group for almost 25%. Although it should be noted, that there have been no firm guarantees that such family support will be available in future and cover the life cycle of the families. Together with the income provision, housing is also an important part of the living standards. After introducing new measures of family-oriented policy the attention has been drawn to families with two or more children. It must be stated, that almost all families from this category are in the need of better housing facilities (98,1%), and 46,2% live in uncomfortable conditions, below the social standard. Our calculations show that only 6% of the targeted groups can actually solve their housing problems through the use of federal family subsidies. 40% will be able to make their first mortgage payment and 50% will even not be able to participate in mortgage programmes. The only option for such families is investing these subsidies in the accomplishment of their current housing facilities. The results of our consequence model provide enough evidence, that the current federal family support programme is just the first step in the series of modernization processes, which can provide the compatibility of women employment and a boost in fertility.